


All He Can Hope For

by DarveysBughead



Series: All They Can Hope For [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Abduction, Alice is there for a hot second, Angst, Brief mention of Barchie, Could still happen, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Heavy - Freeform, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Betty's kidnapping, PTSD, TBK mentions, Trauma, bughead - Freeform, deep talks, missing moment, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29564103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarveysBughead/pseuds/DarveysBughead
Summary: When Alice opens the door, she looks him over with a smile.“I’m glad you’re here. Hopefully you can fix this,” she says simply, patting him on the shoulder affectionately. “She’s in her room. I trust you remember where it is.”She seems to be biting back a smile, despite the worry in her eyes and he can’t help the short laugh that escapes him. “I think I can find it,” he replies, making his way upstairs.OR; Betty finally talks about what happened with TBK and she and Jughead begin to repair what they broke
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: All They Can Hope For [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2180949
Comments: 38
Kudos: 93





	All He Can Hope For

**Author's Note:**

> I have seen one or two other fics where Jughead is the one Betty opens up to about her trauma and her experience with TBK so I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and give my take on it too. Thanks to Grace for saying she wanted to see this, because her comment was what prompted me to start writing!

He’s sick of the tension between him and Betty. They’ve been back in Riverdale for a month and he’s feeling far more comfortable with Archie now, but there’s still so much unresolved with Betty. The conversation has been brewing between them, the air surrounding them growing more taut by the day. The tension feels heavy and uncomfortable and the more time that passes, the less they speak. 

It’s Friday night, Archie is off meeting with someone, somewhere, and Jughead has had enough. And when he looks through the window of Archie’s old bedroom (which he’s currently sleeping in while Archie uses the master bedroom) and can see Betty crying, curled on her window seat with sobs shaking her body, he can’t help but go over there. 

He finds himself at the Cooper’s front door in minutes; knocking on it feeling strange given that it had once been his home.

_ What am I doing? _

When Alice opens the door, she looks him over with a smile. 

“I’m glad you’re here. Hopefully you can fix this,” she says simply, patting him on the shoulder affectionately. “She’s in her room. I trust you remember where it is.”

She seems to be biting back a smile, despite the worry in her eyes and he can’t help the short laugh that escapes him. “I think I can find it,” he replies, making his way upstairs. 

Her door is closed, but not latched and he knocks lightly before pushing it open.

His still-broken heart splinters at the sight of her. She’s still curled in a ball on the window seat, arms wrapped around her legs, but her sobs are silent, her face buried in her knees. Something tells him she’s gotten used to crying silently. 

_ What happened to you, Betty? _

Her wide eyes find him and she sniffles, swiping at her eyes with the back of one hand as he locks the door behind him.

“Jug. What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you. We… I think we have stuff we need to talk about.” 

She’s still crying, but pretending she isn’t and he wants to hug her, wants to take away whatever pain she’s feeling, wants to fix whatever thing is making her cry.

“I slept with Archie.”

He freezes at that, white hot rage flashing through him, but then dissipating almost as quickly as it began when he looks at her tear-streaked face. A burning sensation he easily identifies as jealousy begins to boil in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t want to know this. He doesn’t know why she’s telling him this. 

_ I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know.  _

“When?”

She seems to have expected his question. “A few times… over the last few weeks.”

He nods, shoving his hands in his pockets, and rocking back on his heels. The burning jealousy intensifies, warring with the anxiety and the concern he feels for her, her body still curled in on itself, her face still wet with tears.

“Is that what you’re upset about?”

She looks at the floor. “No. Well… no, that’s not it. Although I feel like a jerk for mentioning it to _you_.”

“You’re not a jerk,” he says softly, although he’s still burning. “You’re both single adults, there’s nothing wrong with having some fun.”

She gapes at him and she’s silent for so long that he becomes self conscious, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “What?” he asks eventually, and she snaps her mouth closed and smiles tightly at him.

“Nothing. It’s just that I said the exact same thing to him.” She grimaces and then says, “I didn’t want him to think it was more than it is.”

_ I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know.  _

“And what is it?”

“It’s… no-strings-attached fun.” She shrugs. “Or it  _ was _ . It’s over now.”

_ I don’t want to know. _

He hates himself for asking but he can’t help it. What a masochist. “Why?”

“It’s not what I want.  _ He’s  _ not what I want.”

She meets his gaze and the tension in the room increases tenfold, weighing him down.

“What do you… I mean, what are you upset about?” he asks, choosing the easier question over the one he really wants to ask;  _ what do you want?  _ Who  _ do you want? _

“I, um… I went through something, a couple of months ago. And it’s… it’s not easy to get over.”

“I know,” he says softly and watches her brow crease in confusion. The little line between her eyes is still as adorable as it always was. He hastens to explain, “I know when something is wrong with you. We might not have spoken in a long time but I still know you. I know when you’re trying to pretend everything is okay.”

She lets out a raw sob, choking on the force of it and nods her agreement. “I should’ve known you would notice. You always were way too perceptive.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She chuckles humorlessly. “I don’t know how to. I haven’t really been dealing with my emotions lately. Since it happened, I haven’t… I haven’t made the best choices. My FBI-issued therapist has been trying to get me to talk for a long time and all I can do is lie or state the facts. I don’t know how to talk about how I feel about it.”

“Then tell me the facts.” He perches on the edge of the bed and she shifts slightly, her eyes taking in his form, and he suspects she’s remembering the same things he is. This had been their safe place, their haven throughout everything they’d experienced in their youth, everything that had brought them together and then eventually pushed them apart. There are so many memories in this room, in this  _ bed _ . 

_ Don’t think about it. Don’t think about making love to her here. Don’t think about her crying and apologising for kissing Archie. Don’t think about lying next to her for weeks without touching or speaking.  _

She nods, getting up and crossing the room, sitting lotus-style on the bed, her back against the headboard. “No one else has asked about it,” she says, barely louder than a whisper, staring down at her hands, “no one else has noticed.”

“Your mom hasn’t asked?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t mentioned it?”

“No.”

“Why haven’t you told her?”

She sighs. “A lot of reasons, really. Partly because technically it’s classified. Partly because I don’t want to worry her. Partly because I won’t be able to answer the questions she’ll ask.”

The more she says, the more he worries about her. It’s worse than he’s been thinking. Whatever had happened, she’s still afraid of it. She’s repressing it. He eyes her carefully and she takes the hint, sighing again, fidgeting with her fingers and then finally starting to talk.

“I was abducted. I spent two weeks locked up and being tortured. And then I was rescued, but the killer got away. It’s a miracle I was rescued before he killed  _ me _ , but he got away and now he’s out there, hurting other women. Killing other women. And I’m on desk duty because my superiors are punishing me for going in without backup.”

_ This fucker. Who is he? I want to kill him.  _

“You were…” he can’t even finish, his fists curling up and his muscles tensing.

“Abducted, yes. August 10th. I was there for two weeks… well, fifteen days, to be exact.” She lets out a breath noisily. “He’s called… he’s called the Trash Bag Killer. TBK. He butchers women and wraps their various body parts in trash bags.”

_ Fuck.  _ “Hence the name.”

“Hence the name,” she echoes. “He’s… brutal. Sadistic. He kidnaps and tortures women before he kills them. He… terrorises—” she chokes on the word and folds in on herself, her arms around her body as if she’s trying to hold herself together. Another juddering sob falls from her lips and a fresh set of tears begins to tumble down her cheeks. 

Jughead reaches out to her without a second thought, pulling her into his arms, cradling her head on his shoulder, her tears soaking into the collar of his flannel.

She clings to him desperately, muffling her sobs in his shirt, curling around him like a koala.

“You’re okay,” he says softly, “I’ve got you. You’re safe with me.”

“I’ve always been safe with you.” She pulls away, her eyes meeting his, their faces an inch apart. 

As she leans in and brushes her lips against his, he closes his eyes, giving himself over to the sensation for a split second before reality hits him and he breaks the kiss, pushing Betty away slightly. Her eyes turn dark with the rejection and he needs to reassure her before she closes herself off again. 

“Betty, no,” he says gently. “You’re not thinking clearly. This isn’t what you want.”

“You don’t know what I want. You don’t know me anymore.” The words sound like they should have fire, a bite,  _ something, _ but they’re just… flat. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her tongue darts out to wet her lips, blinking back another wave of tears as she avoids meeting his gaze. Tension is rolling off her again and he squeezes her shoulder, trying to bring her comfort, reassurance. It takes a minute for him to realise he’s massaging her shoulders, attempting to ease the tension and the knots in the muscles he finds there.

“I’ll always know you, Betts. And you said yourself that you’re not really dealing with your emotions. I’m not going to be your latest no-strings-attached fun to bandaid over your emotions. That’s not who we are to each other.” He softens his words with gentle strokes of her back and shoulders, his palms pressing against her T-shirt and feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric. “Tell me more about TBK.”

“I can’t.” She turns her face into his neck again and he feels the wetness of her cheeks against his skin. 

“Tell me the facts,” he says, “tell me the things I’d be able to find in a file at Quantico. You don’t have to talk about how you feel.”

He’s still rubbing her back, massaging her shoulders, unable to stop touching her now that he’s started. It’s terrifying how comforting it is to just be touching her again after so long. 

_ I’m a glutton for punishment, apparently. _

“I went in without backup. I had a hunch, a lead, and I’d been told to wait but I knew if we didn’t go in, he’d run and we’d lose him again. So I went in alone. I was hoping to save the woman he was holding captive: Theresa. But when I got there, she was already dead. And in her place, he took  _ me _ . Or… not so much in her place. Her dismembered body was in the well with me.” She swipes at her eyes again, seemingly unable to stem the flow of tears. Her voice is hollow, monotone, as if she’s had to detach from herself in order to talk about what she’d been through, “He put me in a… he dropped me down a well. It wasn’t too deep, but there was no way out. I tried to climb, I destroyed my fingers and my fingernails until they were just bloody stumps, but I couldn’t get out. He lowered water to me every day, just enough to keep me alive so he could torture me. He’d stand at the mouth of the well with a chainsaw, just letting it run, and laughing. I was going to end up hacked into pieces and wrapped in trash bags. And he was letting me know it. A few times he drugged the water and I had hallucinations for hours. Sometimes he dropped trash bags down on me. The way they’d float down was so sinister. He was going to kill me, there was no doubt in my mind.”

Jughead feels like he can’t breathe as he listens to Betty’s tale. He wants to speak, wants to console her, whisper her name, tell her she’s safe, but he can’t break the spell. He knows, instinctively, that this is the most she’s said about the experience and he wants to let her get it out. As much as he can’t bear to hear the trauma she’s been through, he knows she needs to talk it through, to say it out loud, to begin to move on from it by sharing the burden. He just keeps touching her, stroking her bare arms, her back, her neck. She doesn’t even seem to realise he’s doing it, so deep into the emotional well of her trauma.

“When they rescued me, I was barely conscious. I don’t remember much of it. I hadn’t eaten in two weeks and my brain was pretty fuzzy from the lack of food, the stale air and the drugs. He’d gone when he heard them coming. His lair was actually pretty genius - he had visibility over the road that led into the area, so he knew when I was coming, and he’d killed Theresa as a way of punishing me for finding him. He must have seen the cavalry coming and he left. We haven’t been able to find him since. He’ll be in some other town now, torturing and killing more women, all because of me. Because I went in without backup and he got away.”

_ Fucking hell.  _

“Betty,” Jughead breathes, raising his hand to her face and wiping her tears, “you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Am I?” she asks, laughing humorlessly. The sound cuts through him, and his stomach lurches. He can’t fathom a world where Betty Cooper doesn’t exist. He can barely fathom a world where he doesn’t see her or speak to her regularly, and that has been his reality for seven years. He can’t imagine the time it would take to get over the loss of her life.

“I’m glad they rescued you.” His voice shakes, betraying the emotions he’s feeling, and he suddenly becomes aware of the wetness on his own cheeks. “You can’t imagine how glad I am that he didn’t get a chance to kill you.”

“Why?” she asks. “Why would you be glad about that? You’ve given the impression that you have no interest in seeing or speaking to me.”

“That… wasn’t my intention.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before.” She pushes him away, getting up and pacing the room. “Why are you here, Jug? After everything that’s happened, everything we went through, everything we’re going through now… why are you here?” Her hands are on her hips, her eyes suddenly blazing and he sees some of the fight he’d been looking for earlier. This is the Betty Cooper he needs to see. This is the Betty Cooper he knows. 

“Because I need you in my life.”

“That’s not what you said on that voicemail.”

“I was drunk! I’d had so much to drink that I don’t even know how I got home that night. I have no memory of that voicemail. I don’t know what I said, or why, but I can guarantee that it was complete bullshit.”

“You don’t remember it? Let me refresh your memory.” Betty snatches her phone off her nightstand, dialling into voicemail and hitting play on the message.

Jughead doesn’t have time to think about the fact that she’s kept it and what that means, because in the next second, his voice comes through the speaker, sounding tinny, but surprisingly sober, given his lack of memory of the evening. 

_ “Betty, I’m done with you. I’m done with waiting for you, I’m done with thinking about you. I have my choice of women here tonight and I can take any one of them home with me and you get no say in that. You ruined us. That wasn’t my doing, no matter how much you want to blame me. That was  _ you _. And I’ve spent too long waiting for you to apologise and make amends. You don’t get to dictate my life anymore. I’m a published writer now. My life is a success. And I don’t owe any of that to you.” _

He’s reeling, hearing his own words, hearing the anger and the spite dripping from every syllable. He has no memory of ever even thinking any of those things, let alone saying them out loud. “Fuck.”

“You think?” Betty snapped and he pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a sigh. 

_ What the fuck was I thinking? Where the hell did that shit even come from? No wonder she’s pissed. _

“I have no memory of that, Betts.”

“Don’t call me that right now,” she snarls and he holds up his hands in defence. 

“Sorry.”

“Do you know what I thought about every day I was being held by TBK? I thought about how I was never going to see you again. I thought about how I was going to die with you hating me. I wondered whether you would even bother to come to my funeral. I thought about the fact that we never talked,  _ really  _ talked, about what happened. We didn’t break up, Jughead, we just… ended. And I relived those final days of that summer after graduation over and over again in my mind, trying to figure out what I should have said or when I should have said it, or what it even was that I needed to say. What it was you that needed to hear.” She begins pacing the floor again, wriging her hands and then curling them into fists. He recognises the gesture and wants desperately to stop her, but he isn’t sure she’ll accept his touch, isn’t sure she won’t fly off the handle if he reaches out, so he sits and watches her pace, her socked feet padding silently on the carpet, her toned legs on display in the tiny pyjama shorts she’s wearing. 

_ How is she still this impossibly beautiful? _

“I couldn’t bear to be alone after they let me out of hospital. I started sleeping with my partner so I didn’t have to be alone at night. And when I realised that wasn’t helping, I got a cat.”

He smiles then. “You got a cat? What kind?”

“Not the point” she snaps and his smile falls. “You know what I thought when Archie called me and said he needed us all? I thought about  _ you _ . I wasn’t sure you’d even show up, but you were the only person I wanted to see. And now… now everything is fucked.” There are tears in her eyes again and the yoyo of emotions shows him just how broken she really is. “How do we come back from everything that happened?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, “but I want to try. I want to fix things with you. Because even when we were broken up, I still considered you a friend, at least. And right now… well, tonight is the most we’ve spoken in years. I want to fix that.”

“You want us to be… friends.”

“I…I want us to be  _ something _ . Right now, we’re practically strangers and I hate it.” 

Her eyes go soft as she looks at him, but there is a tension in the set of her jaw that tells him it isn’t going to be that easy. She crosses back to the bed, sitting down next to him and taking his hand. 

_ Calm down. You’re like a fucking teenager again. _ The heat that flares within him at the simple touch of her hand in his was almost too intense after so long of not feeling her willingly touching him. 

“I don’t know how to be your friend anymore,” she says softly. “I don’t know how to be around you in that way without wanting…more.”

She turns the full force of her gaze on him and he gets lost in the emerald of her eyes for a long moment. She’s still tearful, and her eyes are glistening with it, shining softly at him in the dim room. 

_ God, I miss her. _

“I’m... what do you mean by more?”

“I don’t know if you heard what I said before. All I could think about while I was waiting to die, was you. And that was at a time when I thought I was never going to see you again. And now I have to see you every goddamn day and remember that we’re not…that we’re  _ nothing  _ to each other.”

That she thinks they’re nothing to one another is painful to hear. 

“You could _never_ be nothing to me. You will always be the love of my life.”

“I know that. But I’m a fucking mess, Jug. You said it yourself, I’m using sex as a bandaid, and I can’t do that with you. You were right to stop me earlier. We can’t do that. We will never be no-strings-attached.” she laughs hollowly. “We have so many strings we’re… I don’t know, something with a lot of strings. I can’t do metaphors right now.”

He chuckles, watching the way she wipes her eyes again. 

“You’re not wrong about the strings. We are… impossibly tangled.” He fidgets with her fingers. “You haven’t told anyone else all of this.” It’s a statement, not a question, but she answers it anyway.

“No.”

“Why me?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious. Or haven’t you been paying attention?” She’s teasing now, and the lightness in her voice is a relief. But then her face drops again, growing more serious. “I can’t… _ we  _ can’t…I’m not there yet. I’m not…ready.”

“I don’t think either of us are. But…if you’ll have me, I’d like to try to help. I’d like to be here for you, the way I should’ve been for years.”

She smiles, her eyes finally devoid of tears. “I’d like that.”

It’s a start. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. But she’s smiling, and some of the deadness in her eyes has dissipated and for now, he’ll take it. He doesn’t know what battles they’re going to have to fight, he doesn’t know what forms her PTSD is going to take, he doesn’t know how impossibly messy their lives are going to get. 

All he can hope for is to keep her smiling through it all. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Strange for me not to have written smut, but that's not where they are just yet. I hope this is something like what we see when they begin to repair their fractured connection. Leave a comment if you want to!


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